Poynton Villas & The Twentywell Brickworks

 Poynton Villas, circa 1912

Just behind the Castle Inn on Twentywell Road, are the site of the former Twentywell Brick and stone Works and the adjacent remains of Victorian buildings known locally as Poynton Villas. Despite the size and importance of the works in their hey-day, with quarrying quite possibly going back to near Medieval times, surprisingly little is known about them. Currently a local archaeology group, The Time Travellers, have launched a project to find out more about the site by means of archival research, tapping local knowledge, and exposing and surveying the remains.

Twentywell Brick Works

The area around the Castle Inn was known as Twentywellsick and is referred to in a twelfth century document as Quintinewelle, from St. Quentin’s Well. The brickworks site appears to have started life as a quarry, which is shown on a map of 1840, and surrounded by fields farmed by the Outram family. The stone and brick works is first listed in the 1872 White’s Directory and shown on a 1876 map. It seems highly probable that it was first built to help supply the vast numbers of bricks needed for Bradway Tunnel.

John Dunstone refers to ‘the quarry owned by Tedbar Tinker’ before the railway works commenced, so it looks as if Mr Tinker was responsible for setting up the brickworks. This is the same Mr Tinker whose name is still commemorated in Tinkers Corner.

The name of the business seems to have varied. An advertisement from 1876 mentions the ‘Twentywell Stone Brick (and Pipe) Works’. One from Saturday 7th June 1890 in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph states: ‘Wanted brick setters and drawers, Twenty Well Brick Works Bradway, near Sheffield.’ In Kelly’s Directory, 1891, the business is listed as ‘Twentywell Stone & Brick Works (T. J. Tinker, proprietor), stone quarries, stone saw mills, & brick manufacturers, Bradway’. This suggests the quarry was active at that time and you can still see a gravestone in Dore Church Yard marked ‘TWENTY WELL STONE CO LTD’ on the reverse.

Tedbar Tinker seems to have owned the company for a long period with the yard finally closing in 1939, but the buildings and offices remained untouched for a further 20 years before the buildings were demolished in the mid 1950s. An entry in the London Gazette of 29th November 1957 mentions a meeting “to discuss the manner in which the books accounts and documents of the company shall be disposed of” following its earlier voluntary liquidation. If only we knew where those documents went !

The large quarry remained disused for another 10 years before being largely filled with material from buildings demolished for Sheffield’s Town Hall extension in the 1970s. The area was eventually built over with housing fronting Castlerow Drive and Close in the late 1970s.

The brickworks were large for the time and supplied a large area of North Derbyshire, with three prominent chimneys which could be seen from some viewpoints a few miles away. The works produced a hard, smooth red brick variously stamped ’20 well’ which can be seen on many local buildings built before 1939. Beyond the outlines of buildings on maps we have little information, but local memories recall a narrow gauge railway network with tipper wagons which provided a fine adventure playground for small boys of the district. There were also ponds on the site.

It seems probable that Castle Row (5 dwellings with the Castle Inn at the end of the block) was built as part of the brickworks development or to serve the accommodation needs of those involved in building Bradway Tunnel.

Poynton Villas

A pair of semi-detached houses, were built further down towards Poynton Woods sometime between 1876 and 1898. A probable reason for building the ‘Villas’ in this position (so far from any road) is that they were originally part of the Twentywell brickworks complex, possibly houses for a manager or senior staff. However, according to copies of Kelly’s Directories, in later years they were occupied by railway staff, with a station manager and a signalman being occupants. There was a signal box down in the railway cutting near to this area, while what is now Dore & Totley station was a short walk away.

One mystery remains to be solved. A copy of deeds associated with the sale of land for the construction of the spur railway line towards the Hope Valley, suggests there were two pairs of villas. Indeed the only surviving picture of Poynton Villas hints at a further building in the background. Whether these were built or demolished at the same time we do not know, as so far nobody has mentioned remembering them. Can you ?

The Villas were demolished in the 1950s or early 1960s after standing empty for some time. Part of the stone wall that ran on the side of the houses and the foundation walls survive. The site can still be recognized adjacent to the path that runs from the side of the ‘Castle Inn’ to Poynton Wood. They must have been basic by today’s standards and unlikely to have electricity or mains drainage.

If you have any family connections with either the brick works or Poynton Villas, or memories from your childhood please let us know, even the smallest snippet can add to our current understanding. What we would dearly like are any pictures of the site. It seems incredible that none are currently known to exist.

Bradway Bugle

Winter 2013